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For years, many large companies have employed that approach in their digital efforts with varying degrees of success. But in the world of fintech, it would appear that even if you can potentially beat ’em, some companies are still willing to buy ’em.

Finance giant Goldman Sachs has been around for nearly 150 years and is best known as an investment banking outfit, but in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 that has permanently altered the fabric of the financial services market and led to the rise of fintechs, the firm, like so many other finance behemoths, began transforming itself.

This week I was kindly invited to appear on Bloomberg TV to talk about a subject which hoves into my line of vision on a fairly regular basis recently, the use of social media in the financial sector, and in particular by CEOs.

Unfortunately there was some rather large, Bob Diamond-shaped news breaking at the same time, so I didn’t have the chance to explore the subject in as much depth as I’d have liked.

Imagine for a minute that you’re the president of the United States and you’re trying to make the case against Wall Street. What’s the best way to do it? As the president, you have almost unlimited access to the traditional media, but that’s not always enough today.

So U.S. president Barack Obama, whose use of the internet arguably helped him win the presidency, isn’t relying on the mainstream media to promote his Wall Street reform agenda; he’s using Google. And he’s going straight for the jugular by bidding on topical keywords related to embattled investment bank Goldman Sachs.